Barry Brickell’s mantra is “It’s not the thing it’s how”. What he means is that the materials the object is made from, the way it is made and the technology used, contain the object’s essence and meaning much more powerfully than whatever it is trying to represent. Brickell’s work uses clay from his own property, processed on site, made into objects with age-old methods and fired in kilns using wood or coal. His sculptures are made from and refer to the landscape, the living world and the steam technology that he lives with. Left outside they become colonised by mosses and plants.

Barry Brickell’s huge sculptural works on display at the Dowse

Barry Brickell’s huge sculptural works on display at the Dowse

Two other current exhibitions in Wellington and the Hutt provide a very stark contrast. The Academy Wellington is showing Mirek Smisek’s Sixty Years Sixty Pots (which was shown at Aratoi last year) with the work of a number of other potters. This exhibition has particular significance since Mirek died very recently at age 88. The City Gallery has the work of Richard Stratton on display. It is hard to imagine three more contrasting pottery exhibitions. Each exhibition is paying homage to very different ways of making and thinking about objects made of clay.

When the craft movement started in the late 1950’s and 60’s it was inspired by a revivalist movement initiated in England and Japan which was a response to the industrialization of the previous century. The ideal craftwork of that time was made by an ‘unknown craftsman’. The best work was considered to come from the tradition of village manufacture for the use of the people in ordinary life. The object’s anonymity, its usefulness, its humility and the traces of the hand that made it was what made its beauty. The fact that it was made in the service of the community embodied an ideal that contrasted with the profit making concerns of conventional industry. The best pots, clothes or woodwork were unsigned so that the user was free to ‘own’ and use the object free of any deference to the maker.

In the last twenty or so years that original craft movement ideology has been discarded and replaced by the competitive branding and celebrity individualism we are surrounded by in today’s consumer society. This transition can even be seen in the Academy exhibition where most work is still domestic ware but the potters have tried to stamp an individual style on their work. Even Mirek Smisek who was one of the founders of the New Zealand craft movement veered later in life towards decorative work that was intended to appeal to the eye rather than serve simple domestic purposes. Mirek trained initially at the Crown Lynn pottery as a designer and maker, but then spent some years working with both Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada who were the joint founders of the folk craft movement.

Richard Stratton’s work is showing at the City Gallery

Richard Stratton’s work is showing at the City Gallery

Richard Stratton is the exemplar of the new craft movement, which regards ceramic work as an art form. This new generation has little regard for an object’s utility and puts most emphasis on individual expression in the manner of most contemporary art projects. Given the curatorial support by the art establishment there is no doubt that this is the way clay work is heading. Curatorial notes accompanying this exhibition suggest that his subject matter deals with “fatherhood, nuclear war, anorexia, famine, television, religion and politics” – all a very long way from the original aim of providing beautiful compliments to domestic living.

It is very unusual these days to find potters working with indigenous materials in the way Brickell has. Almost all materials now are industrially produced and glazing techniques incorporate photographic transfer and an array of industry colours as varied as most paint charts. The shame of this is that most contemporary craft work looks as though it could have been made anywhere in the world. Brickell’s work by contrast evokes a nostalgia for the pioneering days of fifty years ago when potters used whatever materials they could lay their hands on mostly from their own backyard.

A rather sad note is contained in a new British proposal to drop crafts from the list of official creative industries. A recent report suggests replacing the craft category with a digital one: “We recognize that high-end craft occupations contain a creative element, but the view is that in the main, these roles are more concerned with the manufacturing process, rather than the creative process.”

The end of an era?